alt Hacker NewsNeat! Thank you for the info on that one. Bookmarked!
Before I spend well over $100 importing that device, I previously was thinking of brining up a 2001 era motherboard with a USB stack and can natively host the drives, but the 486 that has sat unused may be a solid option. I presumably can find a way to transfer data to a modern system over serial cable or something.
Almost any two floppy drives you can get a hold of will be mechanically different in sometimes significant ways.
I've got one business tower from over 20 years ago still having the floppy drive connected directly to the motherboard the traditional way.
Plus 3 USB models from HP, Sony, and Teac and they don't all behave the same.
Last month for another floppy article I mentioned that one pack of old floppy disks are offgassing(!), the way they continue to inflate the ziplock bag they are in. Replaced the bag with an new Ikea "ISTAD" ziplock and it's almost fully inflated again by now.